Improve attitude with gratitude, James Taylor tells fans

The singer says in an email that giving thanks is the key to overcoming setbacks and dealing with reversals of fortune.

He writes: "To whom we give it is a big question but just go ahead on and do it. Gratitude is the way to an improved attitude, dude."

Taylor then gets a little spacey in Thursday's message, speculating about the possibility that other distant worlds in the cosmos might support life.

The 68-year-old musician, who lives in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, ends by saying: "To have been born in human form and consciousness aboard this unbelievably beneficent planet is an incredible stroke of luck. Dig it."